Author: Elizabeth Gillooly

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Grant Stories

Putting the History of Higher Education Under a Microscope

While the Council for the Advancement of Higher Education Programs (CAHEP) considers the history of higher education a required knowledge area, and it is often a core course in higher education programs nationally, Mason’s Kelly Schrum, PhD, recognized that the class is rarely taught by historians and often lacks a focus on the critical thinking, research, and digital literacy skills essential for success in the rapidly changing higher education workplace.

When Schrum, a historian and associate professor of higher education, discussed this disconnect with colleague Chase Catalano, PhD, at Virginia Tech (VT), they saw that within this challenge there was an interesting opportunity:  Create a history of higher education course at Mason and VT that is founded on historical thinking and research skills. Students could work collaboratively on digital research projects that draw on university archives locally and nationally.  Moreover, they could build on this work to create an open educational resource (OER) on the history of higher education.

Schrum developed a plan, and then turned to 4-VA@Mason to seek a Collaborate Research Grant for her project entitled, “Reimagining the History of Higher Education in the Digital Age.”  Subsequently, Schrum and Catalano received 4-VA funding to help get the project off the ground and, joined by Sophia Abbot, a doctoral student at Mason, they got to work. 

Abbot, who has previously been involved with faculty development and has studied student-faculty partnerships in teaching, plays several integral roles in the project. The first is determining the current teaching landscape in higher education.  To that end, Abbot and Mason sophomore, Kelly Tcheou, sent out surveys to instructors involved in teaching the history of higher education around the country to determine the specific subject areas included in their courses.

Along with Schrum and Catalano, Abbot implemented a new primary source learning activity for their courses this past fall. While Schrum and Catalano supported students in the selection of their research topics and their analysis of primary historical sources, Abbot helped students translate their research to the digital space as they developed online learning activities for their peers. Abbot shares the example of one student’s research which looked at the history and the language of the Pell Grant.  The student gained a deeper understanding of how the language used in the original legislation resulted in who was able to gain access to the grants over the years; and who was not.  “Their research is doing exactly what we’d hoped… students are empowered to take historical thinking into their work,” says Abbot. “When students create historical narratives — learning the context and history of the sources — they can look back at sources and understand the impact of the history of higher education on colleges and universities today.”

Additionally, Abbot introduces students to the opportunity to share their work on the primary source website the team is building. Here, Abbot acts as a liaison between the Mason and VT students and faculty.  “Because I am not in an evaluation role, I am able to make sure that students understand that sharing – or not sharing — their work is completely optional and will not affect their grade.  I’m there to communicate the importance of consent,” she notes. 

Assisting Abbot with the website is Carolyn Mason who graduated from Mason in December with BA in anthropology and plans to begin a PhD program in anthropology in the fall. Mason identifies primary sources related to higher education including a university’s founding, student life, academics, and campus culture and uploads them to the website. She is also collecting a list of university archives that house historical documents related to their institution.

At the conclusion of the history courses, Abbot returns to interview students on both campuses to determine their thoughts about the class and their decision regarding sharing their work on the website.  She has interviewed 12 students and collected 19 student projects from both campuses.

While the project is still in its infancy, it has already generated a lot of attention. The prototype website https://higheredhistory.gmu.edu/ presents more than 100 primary sources. Over 60 history of higher education instructors have responded to the invitation to share their teaching practices. And the team has piloted their primary source learning activity in two different higher education graduate courses (Fall 2020) and recruited a third course to pilot the activity (Spring 2021).

“We were delighted to have the ability to enrich the study of higher education, offer our students the opportunity to develop asynchronous online learning activities, and promote collaboration across institutions,” explains Schrum.  “Already, we have had great results.”

Abbot, Schrum, and Catalano presented initial findings at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy in February.

“This project has been a wonderful exercise in collaboration and research,” concludes Schrum.  “In fact, it has caught the eye of our colleagues at several additional 4-VA schools who are interested in partnering with us on this in the future.  We are also looking at the development of a workshop on this for instructors in the history of higher education. There may be more to come!”

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Grant Stories News

Virginia Food Systems Leadership Institute: From Concept to Course

     4-VA@Mason takes great pride in being the catalyst for hundreds of impactful research projects and innovations in higher education.  This is achieved via micro grant seed funding for Collaborative Research Grants; supporting projects that encourage cooperation between partner schools within the state and capitalize on the strengths of each school.

     However, a new milestone was reached in this effort this spring — as one such grant team partnership morphed from a multi-year, thoughtful, wholistic, statewide Collaborative Research project to another of 4-VA’s foundational endeavors, Shared Courses.  The Shared Course concept has its roots in the 4-VA commitment to identify and deliver top tier courses between partner schools, thus saving the costs involved in bringing unique classes to fruition on each campus.

     The project crossing this boundary is the Virginia Food System Leadership Institute (VFSLI), which found its footings at a 4VA-funded symposium in 2015 at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation in Front Royal.  There, interested faculty were brought together from Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, James Madison University and George Mason University.  Also attending the symposium were campus dining services personnel and sustainability managers. They discussed avenues to harness the intellectual, human, and economic capital of colleges and universities to foster the emerging food economy in Virginia.

   “Immediately, we saw a lot of synergy.  We had a passionate group of folks involved in all areas of food — producers, delivery partners, and consumers.” says Kerri LaCharite, PhD, Assistant Professor in Mason’s Department of Nutrition and Food Studies. “What’s more, we also recognized the need to support small-to medium-sized growers by helping them access institutional markets — a real boost for Virginia’s rural economy.”

     In April of 2016, again under the 4-VA banner, a second symposium convened more than 40 Virginia food system stakeholders including farmers and processors; distributors and Aramark and Sodexo representatives (food service vendors at Virginia colleges); and faculty from the four schools.  Their focus was to increase university sourcing of Virginia-grown food.

     In 2018, the leaders of this effort from the four 4-VA schools developed an intensive four-week class which was piloted at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation.  It was an instant success. 

     Mason Nutrition and Food Studies graduate student Kelly Kogan attended the course.  “This course was a fantastic chance to really immerse myself in the complex and changing chain of food delivery systems in Virginia,” Kogan said.  “I also loved the mix of students who attended.  We were graduates and undergraduates representing five schools.”

     This year, the latest breakthrough is the course: NUTR 626 Food Systems — a fully online, asynchronous, and synchronous, class offered through 4-VA Shared Courses program.  It will run Monday through Friday May 24 through June 17 with synchronous sessions 12-1 pm and 5-6:30 pm. Although Mason’s LaCharite and UVA’s Tanya Deckla Cobb will take the lead, the teaching will be divided between all the schools – including Tech’s Kim Niewolny and Michael Broderick from JMU. This year, this top team is joined by former Virginia Secretary of Agriculture Basil Gooden, currently a visiting scholar at VCU.


(Part of the VFSLI team on a recent call:  Clockwise from top right:  Kerri LaCharite, Basil Gooden, Michael Broderick and Tanya Deckla Cobb.)   

     “This is a one-of-a-kind class which could only have been developed through a true collaborative effort,” explains LaCharite.  “Each school contributed something vital to the project, and we are the better for it.  But, without the 4-VA funding, this would never have happened.  We’ve gone from a concept to a reality which will benefit students – and, subsequently, food system sustainability, farmers, schools, and businesses throughout Virginia.”

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News

Collaborative Research Grant Calls for Proposals Now Open

4-VA@Mason has opened calls for Collaborative Research Grant (CRG) proposals for the 2021-2022 academic year.  Proposals will be accepted from March 1 through April 15, 2021. Proposal information can be found here. The grants are designed to facilitate and support alliances which leverage the strengths of each partner university to improve efficiencies in research and higher education.

“The 4-VA Collaborative Research Grant program provides our Mason faculty an opportunity to bring to life a research endeavor that will benefit our students, higher education, citizens statewide, and audiences beyond,” explains 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator Janette Muir.  “This CRG program provides faculty with seed money to develop proposals and hypotheses with an eye toward improving research competitiveness in the state and winning subsequent major, federal grants for the projects.”

Since the premiere of the Collaborative Research Grant program at Mason in 2013, more than 65 4-VA CRG projects have been funded, covering a range of topics throughout schools from humanities to the sciences.  Previous grant subjects have included increasing food sustainability in the state; testing the antibacterial activity of computationally designed antimicrobial peptides; redesigning a core course on the history of higher education; and accelerating the discovery of novel polar thermoelectric materials.

Successful proposals will incorporate collaborations with faculty from at least one other 4-VA partner school; opportunities to engage undergraduate and graduate student researchers for real-world experience and growth; and plans for the dissemination of research findings statewide or nationally.

The Collaborative Research Grants are just one segment of a greater 4-VA mission to identify and boost efficiencies in educational design and research.  Now in its 10th year at Mason, the 4-VA program also supports Course Redesign, Shared Courses, and Degree Completion.

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News

4-VA@Mason Offers Online Academic Assessment Grants

4-VA@Mason is offering ten $4,000 grants to support faculty interested in developing and piloting alternative assessment strategies for online learning.  The goal of the effort is to examine student evaluation practices and help bolster student engagement, encourage academic integrity, and reduce tendencies toward academic outsourcing.  To ensure broad representation from all disciplines, proposals for the grants are encouraged from all ten colleges within the university. 

The grants are being offered under the direction of The Stearns Center, which will provide 1:1 instructional design support for the accepted proposals.

“When we pivoted to remote learning in March, through the Instructional Continuity Working Group, we quickly heard that faculty were struggling with academic outsourcing and other integrity challenges,” said Charles Kreitzer, Executive Director of Online Operations.  “Through these grants, we want to work together to develop strong, tested models for assessment.”

The proposals are due November 20. The planned timeline builds out the assessments in the spring, with pilot programs running in the summer and fall.  From there, each program will go through data analysis to closely examine impact before they are introduced for use. 

“One of the pillars of our mission at 4-VA@Mason is to identify and grow innovative ideas in teaching and learning,” explains 4-VA Campus Coordinator and Associate Provost Janette Muir.  “This effort to reimagine online assessment practices clearly supports that goal.”

For more information, contact your school’s Instructional Continuity Working Group representative.

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News

4-VA@Mason Awards 20-21 Collaborative Research Grants

Nine Mason faculty members were recently awarded 4-VA funding for research projects spanning colleges throughout the university.  Each of the lead researchers plan to collaborate with at least one of the other partner 4-VA schools. 

“The 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grants provide opportunities for our faculty to work in conjunction with colleagues at other schools to advance their study of a particular issue,” said Janette Muir, Associate Provost for Academic Initiatives and Services and the 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator. “These grants capitalize on the importance of partnerships and avoids researching in ‘silos’.  What’s more, 4-VA collaborative efforts offer the ability to leverage the strengths of each partner university in order to accomplish more than any individual university could achieve alone.”

Recipients of the 20-21 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grants are:

  • Sabine Doebel – College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Applied Developmental Sciences              

Does Social Understanding Support the Development of Executive Function in Early Childhood?

(with UVA)

This project will examine ‘executive function’ in children — the ability to regulate thoughts and actions in the service of various goals. Because much remains unknown about how the change in executive function occurs, this team will test the hypothesis that as children become aware that others evaluate them (a form of self-awareness), they become increasingly capable of engaging executive function to accomplish goals. The team plans to identify promising ways to support executive function in preschoolers.

  • Pei Dong – Volgenau School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering              

A study on the ultrahigh salt adsorption capacity of an energy-efficiency water desalination technology

(with UVA)

To relieve a growing water crisis worldwide, much emphasis has been placed on the effective desalination of salt water, as 97% of the earth’s water is held by the oceans. The goal of this collaborative research grant is to design next-generation electrode materials to advance the energy-efficient capacitive deionization technology.

  • Olga Gkountouna – College of Science, Department of Computational and Data Sciences

Is AI capable of identifying meaningful patterns in the temporal behavior of solvated macromolecules?

(with JMU)

This team will investigate Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies that enhance the analysis of solvated macromolecules time evolution. They plan to implement a convergence system bridging the temporal and spatial evolution of molecules and macromolecules in liquid environments to visible patterns of behavior, aggregation, and networking evidenced by data analysis. The resulting information will be fundamental for finding solutions for drug delivery at the nanoscale, environmental pollution, skin and nerve remediation, among other applications of nanoscience.

  • Wenying Ji – Volgenau School of Engineering, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering   

Modeling of Stakeholder Communication Network in Disaster Response

(with UVA and VT)

Effective communication among stakeholders is necessary to facilitate efficient coordination and targeted planning following disasters, thereby enhancing community resilience.  The research objective of this proposal is to derive a quantitative model to represent stakeholder communication networks and evaluate communication efficiency among all parties.

  • Laura Lukes – Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning                

Energizing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Production in Virginia through the Development of a Regional Community of Practice for SoTL Faculty Developers

(with UVA, JMU, VT and VCU)

Through this grant, a Community of Practice model of support for faculty developers engaging faculty in Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) will be established and produce open access planning resources for faculty developers. The goal is to ultimately improve the research competitiveness and dissemination success of faculty at Virginia institutions in the area of SoTL research projects.

  • Kelly Schrum – College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Higher Education Program

Reimagining the History of Higher Education in The Digital Age

(with VT)

The objective of this collaborative research grant is to redesign a core course on the history of higher education in the United States to include a focus on historical thinking, digital literacy, and research skills.  The team will also create an open educational resource (OER) on the history of higher education.

  • Xiaoyan Tan – College of Science, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Accelerating the Discovery of Novel Polar Thermoelectric Materials with Density Functional Theory Calculations

(with UVA and JMU)

This project will study polar thermoelectric materials, which transform heat into electricity. Because the fundamental mechanisms that govern the thermoelectric properties are not fully understood, the team hopes to identify a series of materials to better predict novel polar thermoelectrics with tailored properties. This could lead to turning large sources of waste — released by spacecraft, motor vehicles and industrial plants – into electricity.

  • Girum Urgessa – Volgenau School of Engineering , Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering

Scaled Testing of Projectile Penetration in Conventional and High-Performance Concrete Targets

(with VT)

This 4-VA team will design and conduct small-scale testing of projectiles penetrating high-performance concrete targets.  The outcomes of the experiments will allow the ability to model/predict projectile penetration depths across a variety of concrete strengths and types, and address questions surrounding the underlying penetration mechanics in next generation cementitious materials.  This information will be valuable for military analysts and decision makers responsible for infrastructure vulnerability assessment.

  • Monique van Hoek – College of Science, National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases

Computationally designed antimicrobial peptides against antibiotic-resistant bacteria

(with UVA)

Through years of excessive use or misuse of antibiotics in humans and livestock, bacteria have developed many resistance mechanisms. There is an urgent need to identify new compounds to kill these antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial peptides are small strings of protein that target bacteria by binding to the bacterial membranes, and then kill the bacteria. The objective of this research is to computationally design and then test novel antimicrobial peptides for antibacterial activity against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Each of the 4-VA@Mason Advisory Board members which reviewed and approved the grants noted the breadth and depth of the timely proposals.  “Our Board was clearly impressed with the value of the research being put forth,” said Muir.  “Thanks to 4-VA, we’re advancing some important research in a thoughtful and efficient manner.”

Established in 2010 upon the recommendation of the Governor’s Higher Education Commission and the Governor’s Commission on Economic Development and Job Creation, 4-VA grants are offered in four broad areas—collaborative research, course redesign, shared courses and degree completion.

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Grant Stories

4-VA@Mason Grant Provides Rich Research Opportunity

Expectations for 4-VA@Mason’s grants include thoughtful, impactful research; statewide collaboration with partner universities; and experiential learning opportunities for students.  However, the 4-VA@Mason story grows stronger when that learning opportunity gets elevated to supporting post graduate work.

Over the past two years, students in Haw Chuan Lim’s lab at Mason’s Science and Technology campus have contributed to the work done on Dr. Lim’s 4-VA grant “High-throughput bee pathogen survey: Combining expertise in pollinator biology, bioinformatics and genomics to yield insight into pollinator health.”  They looked deeply at whether the presence of managed or feral honeybees, with their large colony sizes, influences pathogen populations of native bees (bumble and mason bees).

To do this, Lim’s students — including master’s candidate David Lambrecht — collected bees across 10 sites around Northern Virginia and analyzed pathogen strains – viruses/fungi — using high-resolution genotyping techniques.  They partnered with UVA’s T’ai Roulston, who is appointed to Blandy Experimental Farm, along with landowners and farmers of the Virginia Working Landscape project.  The resulting research will be important as beekeepers and farmers navigate the continuing loss of bee colonies.

That research was the foundation of Lambrecht’s master’s thesis “Prevalence and Cross Infection of Eukaryotic and RNA Pathogens of Honeybees, Bumble Bees, and Mason Bees” which he recently defended via Webex during the Coronavirus shutdown.  “This 4-VA opportunity gave me a chance to research honeybees and other pollinators important to our ecosystem,” explains Lambrecht.  “The results provide some guidance for successfully supporting their populations.”

Armed with his new MS, Lambrecht is off to join the ranks of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he will intern and help with gene editing regulations.

“At 4-VA, we’re always proud of the research opportunities and resulting outcomes we have to show,” noted 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator Janette Muir, “but when we get to combine research and collaboration with these types of prospects for our students — that’s a great success!”

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4-VA Initiatives

A Circuitous Route in Materials Development for ECE 385

While interest in Open Educational Resources is expanding exponentially, sometimes the search results come up short.  This was clearly evidenced by the OER research undertaken by Dr. Nathalia Peixoto for her ECE 385 course. Electric Circuit Analysis I is a complex course with many different attributes, covering the first half of electric circuit theory and practice.  Topics include analyses of circuits with resistors, capacitors, inductors, and operational amplifiers; all supplemented with lab experiments to reinforce the subject matter.  As Peixoto looked for suitable written resources, she found they did not meet the needs of her course.

Peixoto’s research then took a hard turn.  While she couldn’t identify any written sources, she did find videos of lectures and presentations – primarily on YouTube – that more directly addressed the subject topics.  So, she began down the video road, compiling four pages of links to 66 different videos of nodal and mesh analysis, operational amplifiers, capacitors and inductors as well as first order and second order circuits, and more.  In the end, the free video series she curated served as an adaptable substitute for the textbook, which sold for $300.  With 100 students taking the course each year, it resulted in a total savings of $30,000.

Although Peixoto’s proposal to provide free, engaging and enlightening written materials for her students in ECE 385 did come to fruition, the mode employed was not what she had anticipated.  She offers some perspective on her journey, noting that the 4-VA grant, “helped me move forward helping out students.”  Peixoto plans to develop her course notes to share with the wider Mason faculty and more fully test the course materials.

 

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4-VA Initiatives

4-VA Makes a Return Trip to Astronomy: ASTR 113

After tackling the development of an OER textbook for ASTR 113 which resulted in enlightening, digitized materials for the course and saving students up to $200 on a textbook, Dr. Mario Gliozzi applied for and received a second 4-VA@Mason grant to take on the challenge of producing an online homework system to complement and support the redesigned educational resources.

Gliozzi recognized that students were not attending to their homework assignments, which are integral in testing understanding of topics on a regular basis. Therefore, Gliozzi and colleague Dr. Rebecca Ericson were interested in developing a homework system closely related to the new OER material including weekly quizzes with multiple choice, multiple answer, ordering, matching, and jumbled sentences, with feedback and clarification accessible after the quiz deadline.  Additionally, Gliozzi wanted to utilize the many illustrations/graphs available online, which helped prompt questions on fundamental concepts and allowed the students to learn the importance of understanding and interpreting graphs and diagrams.

After employing the new homework program for a semester, Gliozzi tweaked some of the elements and employed them fully the next year (ASTR 113 is only taught in the spring semester). He noticed that once the importance of the weekly homework assignment was properly emphasized at the beginning of the semester, and the students realized the close link between the homework questions and the questions in the proctored tests, the homework quizzes were recognized as one of the most effective tools for preparation and success in the class.

After fine tuning the homework and quizzes, they were made available to all Mason astronomy instructors by uploading them on their permanent ASTR 113 Blackboard repository. Thus, the new materials were a positive change for the students, but also for fellow faculty.

Gliozzi notes, “This 4-VA@Mason grant gave me the chance to develop a tool that proved useful (and free of charge) to complete the student preparation out of class which gave them the best tools possible to be successful in ASTR 113.”

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CAtC

CAtC

this is a wonderful project

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News

Calls for Collaborative Research Grant Proposals Held Open

Due to the current Coronavirus health crisis, the deadline for calls for Collaborative Research Grants has been extended to April 24.

As 4-VA@Mason continues to steadfastly move forward in support the Mason community with the development of meaningful education and research projects, we do recognize the potential for future funding uncertainties. Consequently, while we are still accepting calls for proposals for 20-21 Collaborative Research Grants, we do want to note the possibility of budget cuts in the next fiscal year.

Faculty  considering applying for a grant to develop research and design education projects with collaborators at Mason and at the 4-VA partner schools should contact 4-VA@Mason Faculty and Community Outreach Coordinator Elizabeth Gillooly for more information.

About the Grant:

“The 4-VA program provides our Mason faculty the opportunity to bring a research idea to life that can benefit our students, higher education, and Virginia citizens statewide,” explains 4-VA@ Mason Campus Coordinator Janette Muir.  “We are especially interested in research collaborations that leverage the strengths of each partner university and improve efficiencies in higher education.”

In addition to encouraging cross-collaboration between institutions, 4-VA seeks to engage undergraduate and graduate student researchers. “Our goal is to afford our students substantive and meaningful research opportunities,” continues Muir.  “4-VA student researchers leave our schools with important and real-world experience that will help them transcend from ‘just’ a job applicant to a standout candidate.”

Now in its 10th year at Mason, the 4-VA program has grown to include William and Mary, James Madison, Old Dominion, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia.

Currently, eight 2019-2020 grant awards are underway at Mason covering a range of topics including these collaborations with other institutions:

  • “Communication Across the Curriculum: Creating Faculty Resources for Building Communication Skills in the Discipline” Partner Institutions: VT, JMU
  • “Developing a Blood Test to Support Treatment of Surgically Induced Type I Diabetes” Partner Institution: VCU
  • “Species Richness Resilience to Habitat Fragmentation and Restoration in Tropical Rainforests” Partner Institutions: JMU, UVA

Faculty interested in applying for a 2020 – 2021 grant can learn more by visiting the Research Grants tab on this website.